Georg Trakl (1887–1914) has emerged as one of the most influential poets of the century. Kudszus both explores and participates in the relentless process of Trakl’s writing. Presumptions of objectivity, authority, dialogue, and coherence are questioned in a discourse that also involves Martin Heidegger’s philosophical reflections on Trakl, C. G. Jung’s self-analytical reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the Bluebeard tale as related by Charles Perrault.

 

Faithful to its title, Poetic Process activates key issues of twentieth-century poetry—terror, pain, madness, imagination unbound—through a dynamically self-reflective inquiry. Under the impact of the poetic text, this investigation engages in a continuous refinement and transformation of its own critical stance. Poetic Process draws on the ability of poetry to explore uncharted realms of the human condition. The result is a contribution to the knowledge of poetic language and effects.

W. G. Kudszus is a professor of German literature at the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and has published on poetry, literature and schizophrenia, psychoanalysis, twentieth-century prose, and the theory of translation.

"A bold and vital departure from existing criticism and its predominantly conservative tenets. Rich in subtle imagination and poetic affinity."—Peter Beicken, University of Maryland